Surf’s Up, Condensed: Top Creativity Links for November 3, 2010

Time Management for Creative People
This short e-book by Mark McGuinness of Wishful Thinking blog discusses best practices for making the most of one’s work time. The subtitle is “manage the mundane – create the extraordinary.”

“Inspiration is the sexy side of creative success. Its less popular sibling is Hard Work. If Inspiration is the party animal, out every night, then Hard Work is hunched over the books in the library with no time to talk. You need both of these to succeed, but the key seems to be keeping them separate.”

“I often plain flat out don’t have confidence in my desires. If I discover that I want something, I will more often than I like to admit have an initial response of suspicion to the thing I’m hankering after. I just don’t trust myself when I get that spark of hunger and interest in something.”

Inside the Homes of the 20th Century’s Most Famous Designers [Slideshow] | Co.Design
Leslie Williamson, a San Francisco photographer, traveled throughout the country to see how 14 midcentury designers, architects, artists, and craftsmen designed and decorated their own homes. The result is Handcrafted Modern: At Home With Mid-Century Designers (Rizzoli), an incredibly intimate peek into the daily lives of architects, woodworkers, and furniture collectors, whose homes seem to be perpetually heaped with just the right amount of clutter.

Live vs. Online Creative Work
Peter Lloyd, writing on IdeaConnection.com, discusses some advantages to online creative collaboration. He references reports of research done by Piet Kommers of the University of Twente in The Netherlands, which assert that there is growing evidence that working in virtual communities and using online tools together can be even more effective in some areas than face-to-face cooperation.

Tainted Innovation, Tempting Innovation
Drew Boyd, writing on the Innovation in Practice blog, discusses the work of Tanya Menon at the University of Chicago, who has found that businesses tend to be “tempted” by ideas they perceive as being externally generated, but dismissive of ideas that appear to come from within a company. He also gives tips on how to make idea-sharing with a company anonymous.